And we both know the sales need to pick up, pronto--especially if Sony wants to keep third party interest. Already third party executives are telling me that if PS3 sales stay below 100k for 3 consecutive months, PS3 SKUs may start disappearing from release lists and in turn create a wealth of de-facto exclusives for the Xbox 360. Sony could stem the tide by supporting third parties financially with co-marketing for exclusivity (or even buying an exclusive window on a game), but I continue to hear tales of Sony expressing a lack of interest in securing third party exclusives.

Alucard

05-23-2007, 07:20 AM

Fucking DIE already and give me closure.

progmetal

05-23-2007, 08:04 AM

You forgot this from the same blog, phknrocket:

Nevertheless, I don't think we'll see many third party games that are currently being developed for both PS3 and Xbox 360 drop their PS3 SKUs, even if Sony has multiple months under 100,000 units sold. The reason is threefold: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot estimates the cost of a port adds just 10 percent to the cost of development; marketing budgets don't increase significantly with the addition of another SKU; and Microsoft isn't willing to pay for the majority of those titles to become Xbox 360 exclusives when they know that their larger installed base means that the bulk of those sales will take place on Xbox 360 without Microsoft execs having to lift a finger. Ironically, the latter is the same reason why Sony isn't willing to pay for exclusives: as Phil Harrison himself pointed out, the PS3 ecosystem is so unhealthy right now, any negotiations for a third party exclusive would be a) weighted almost completely in the third party's favor; and b) unlikely to have much of an impact.

And I certainly didn't know that it was easier to port from PS3 to the 360. No wonder we have these lousy ports from 360.

All kidding aside, what I'm hearing is that a) porting is much easier going from PS3 to 360 than the reverse, but apart from Sony first party, a swath of Japanese developers and Alex Ward over at Criterion Studios, most game creators are doing the reverse, and it shows;